Danilo Donati

by Caterina Massuras

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Danilo Donati was a man who understood perfectly that a dress needs art and poetry, that a Pasolini film had to exude sacredness and mysticism, but that Fellini needed irony and paradox to give the public dreams, illusions and legends. “To be a costume designer,” he loved saying, “you have to know everything: painting, culinary art, music and history.” And it was above all painting that the maestro loved. He had loved it ever since he had gone, when still young, to the Fine Art Academy which was to be a nursery for a whole generation of costume designers, a place where he made art his personal field of interest, the most immediate source of his inspiration. His distinctive trait was his disconcerting neglect of historical accuracy. His costumes were totally invented, but under even with the most unconstrained flight of imagination, you could make out a strict adherence to the era in question.

Imagination and philology went hand in hand. He used documents extensively and understood materials as creative elements. The design was no longer relegated to the sketch, but extended to the manipulation of fabrics. All these features came together in his poetic vision – a vision which drew on art as he continually sought out, transformed and reinterpreted Italy’s artistic heritage. And this was how his costumes became sublime visions, moments stolen from Renaissance portraits, from Antonello da Messina or the frescoes of Piero Della Francesca – Mary in the 1964 film The Gospel According to St. Matthew even revived Piero’s Virgin of the Annunciation in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. And with Pasolini, in his encounter and engagement with that hermetic and taciturn man, Donati created timeless designs. The tunics and cloaks were cut from poor, heavy fabrics and cloths, and so roughly interwoven that they mirrored Giotto and Masaccio. They made an intelligent contrast with the rich, decorated material of the priests’ clothes, perhaps representing that divine splendour that was so dear to the director. He came close to an Oscar in 1965, finally winning his first three years later with Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet for that “lightness of touch and sweetness of image” and those impalpable fabrics that transformed the protagonists of this story into ghosts of beauty and death.

Other costumes were stark and realistic, as for Life is Beautiful. Others were freely interpreted, like Oedipus’ cloak, which was massive and heavy, and so similar to Babylonian reliefs that it seemed like a sumptuous tribute to them. But most often his costumes were dreamt up and a long way from any kind of realism. In the 1974 film Arabian Nights, for example, he used gold, coloured stones and embroidery to create a fairytale atmosphere. Donati was extravagant in his choice of materials: he used plastic, leather and lurex, as well as feathers and shells to create sumptuous, gilded, brightly coloured dresses, like the one Jocasta wears in Oedipus Rex (a part played by an outstanding Silvana Mangano) – or almost nonexistent, simple, meagre and contrasting materials that recalled Burri’s experimentalism. Late Gothic costumes, like the women’s robes and the men’s jackets and brightly coloured hose invade The Canterbury Tales, a sombre world investigated with a Flemish eye. Wide sleeves and voluminous clothes often edged with fur seemed to have come out of paintings by Van Eyck. Huge amounts of cloth, valuable fabrics and brilliant colours were used to create enormous cloaks and hats. There were silk and velvet, symbols of power and luxury, with bright colours gleaming in the shots, as in Gennaio’s yellow tunic embroidered with diamond stitching, and set off with a dark red cloak and enamelled metallic plates.

Then there was the half-grotesque, half-sarcastic imagination that clothed Fellini’s characters in films like Fellini Satyricon, populated by monsters and pagan fantasies, or Casanova, where the clothes were constructed using brightly coloured patches and symbols, perfect for fleshing out the ghosts of eighteenth-century Venice, with Donati adding masks that were almost demonic. His final masterpiece was the 2001 film Pinocchio, made a few months before his death. His costumes, his two Oscars, his four David di Donatellos, his eight Silver Ribbons remain – as does his glory.